Tag Archives: G-20

Special counsel Robert Mueller increasingly views President Donald Trump’s trip back from the G-20 summit in Europe this July as a critical moment in his investigation. And as part of an attempt to uncover just what happened on that fateful flight, his team is expected to question several White House officials. Among them will be the president’s close adviser Hope Hicks.

There is an excellent essay at VANITY FAIR written by SARAH ELLISON that discusses the ever-evaporating influence and power of Twitler’s daughter/wife and her husband. It’s very long, so I will just give you a smattering of amuse-bouches to whet your appetite for the entire thing.

“What is off-putting about them,” one political veteran told me, “is they do not grasp their essential irrelevance. They think they are special.”

In what may turn out to be a landmark case, a Spanish court has started a criminal investigation into allegations that six former officials in the Bush administration violated international law by creating the legal justification for torture in Guantanamo Bay.

The officials named in the 98-page complaint include former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who once famously described the Geneva Conventions as “quaint” and “obsolete.”

Others include John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer who wrote the so-called “torture memo” that justified waterboarding and other extreme interrogation methods for terror suspects.

Also named are: former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith; former General Counsel for the Department of Defense William Haynes II; Jay S. Bybee, formerly of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel; and David S. Addington, former chief of staff and legal advisor to former Vice President Dick Cheney.